This Is How I Find Her (5 page)

But I force my brain to stop there. I don't want to think about what she did next.

I look up at Dr. Choi, who is waiting, watching me, both feet back on the floor, his hands folded over the clipboard at his waist. I'm sure he has a million other patients to see, but he doesn't glance at his watch. He looks like he doesn't have anything else he needs to be doing.

Part of me wants to say what I'm still sure he's thinking.
It was my fault. I should have known she wasn't taking her medication, after I promised I'd remind her. I should have found that other bottle of pills before she had a chance to use it.
As if admitting all of that myself would somehow get my mother off the hook, get Dr. Choi to say
oh, of course it wasn't her fault, let's send her home right now
. Maybe it would erase those sympathetic looks from Dr. Choi's and the nurses' faces; the expressions that make guilt squirm around in my stomach.

But another part of me doesn't want to confess until I get some answers too. It wants to ask how my mother could do this, knowing I would be the one to find her. Whether she realized that what she planned to do would mean leaving me alone, or whether she thought of me at all.

I don't know which of those things I want to be the truth.

I also realize none of these are questions Dr. Choi can answer. So I tell myself it's fine, it's enough, that I know the facts.

“Okay,” I say. I nod again to show I've processed everything he's told me, the good student my mother always thinks I am. And to give myself an extra second so my voice will come out steady. “What happens now?”

Ten

I say it into the silence of the dinner table, where Aunt Cynthia and Uncle John have run out of stories to tell about their workdays. Leila asked what I thought about English class and Mr. Jackson, but I didn't want to say any of the things that popped into my head, about how weird it was to be in class with her and James again and how I spent the entire period remembering yesterday afternoon, so I shrugged and didn't answer. Now, next to me, Leila's just silently bolting down her chicken before she leaves for band rehearsal.

While I speak, I keep my eyes on my food: a chicken drumstick with sauce and piles of rice and salad and snow peas.

“I saw my mother's doctor today,” I tell my plate. The pink and black triangles edging the white china look like teeth, and I imagine them opening up and talking back. Someone's fork clangs loudly against a dish.

When I look up, Uncle John meets my eyes, and I feel Leila looking at me from my right. Only Aunt Cynthia stares down at the table.

I start talking again, wincing when my voice croaks.

“The doctor said he thinks she'll need to spend about ten days in the hospital. Maybe as long as two weeks. She'll need more treatment after that, but the doctors will have to decide whether to recommend her for an outpatient or a residential program based on how she's doing.”

I look up. Now they're all looking back at me.

I hurry through the rest of what Dr. Choi told me. “The hospital stay is just to get her stabilized, but the doctors will have to see how she's doing on the new medication before they decide what kind of treatment to recommend next.”

My words are exactly the ones Dr. Choi used.
Stabilized, treatment, facility, evaluate
. I sound like a medical textbook, but I almost like the terms. They sound concrete enough to hold, but when I say them, I don't feel like I'm talking about my mother.

I see Leila out of the corner of my eye, and the expression on her face looks almost sympathetic, her mouth slightly turned down and her eyes sad. But that can't be.

No one else says anything. I spear a snow pea with my fork and chew it slowly, listening to the crunch reverberate inside my head.

A throat clears.

“You can stay here for as long as it takes,” Aunt Cynthia says.

I'm so surprised to hear her speak that I look up again, and our eyes meet, accidentally, for just a second.

“It sometimes takes longer than the doctors say it will, so I just wanted to say that.” She trails off.

I stare. My empty fork points toward my mouth.

That's all she has to say?

My mother is her sister too.

Uncle John must see something in my face, because he leans forward and jumps in before Aunt Cynthia can say more.

“We'll know more in two weeks” are his words. His tone says
calm down, everyone
.

“But that's what I'm saying, John,” Aunt Cynthia interrupts, not hearing what he's trying to say. “Sometimes it takes longer, and I don't want Sophie to feel—”

Leila pushes her chair away from the table with a sudden scraping sound that makes the rest of us jump and Aunt Cynthia stop talking. I don't look up as her boots clomp over to the garbage and her fork shoves the last of the food off her plate. The dish clinks into the sink.

“I have to leave for rehearsal,” Leila says. Her boots move from the sink to the doorway. “I'll be home late.”

The rest of us stay quiet as Leila moves through the living room and the front hall, as the door closes behind her. I picture her on the other side, looking down the steps to the lawn, her car in the driveway, the opposite of the view I had yesterday. If the scene were a photograph, what would her caption be?

I push my own chair back from the table and stand up with only one more quick glance at Aunt Cynthia and Uncle John. Like Leila, I dump the last of my food into the trash and my plate into the sink. As I follow my cousin's path out of the room, I hear my aunt's and uncle's voices fill the silence behind me, soft but rising.

—

I'm in the guest room—my room—finishing the last of my math homework when I hear the knock at my door. Three soft taps, then whoever's on the other side clears his throat and taps a fourth time.

“Come in,” I call. The words are too quiet and I have to repeat them before I hear the knob turn. In the chair behind the tiny wooden desk, I shift so I can see the doorway. My legs jut out to the side and I jiggle my feet. The chair creaks under me.

Uncle John steps into the room, meets my eyes, then looks at the floor. He takes a seat at the end of the bed, elbows on his knees and wrists hanging down. I remember the way he used to be, teasing Leila and me, trying to make us laugh. He seems so serious now.

“You have to understand that this is stressful for your aunt too,” he says.

I do?

“She is worried about Amy. She just wanted to make sure you know you're welcome here.”

I shrug. I'm not sure I care what she was trying to do, and I don't really want to listen to Uncle John taking her side.

“But that's not actually what I came up here to talk to you about,” he says.

I stop moving my feet, and under me, the chair stops creaking.

“How would you feel about a job in my office after school?” Uncle John asks.

I look up. That wasn't what I expected him to say. Was this what he and Aunt Cynthia were talking about in the kitchen after I followed Leila out?

“I was thinking maybe two afternoons a week and Saturdays,” he says. “We could use your art and math skills, and we pay our part-time employees by the hour.”

Ah.

Uncle John and Aunt Cynthia must know how much my mother's time in the hospital will cost us. This must be their way of offering to help.

I look at the floor again, wondering what my mother would say. Would she wave Uncle John off with a laugh, tell him she'd come up with some other way to get the money? Would she be angry or offended? Would she agree and promise to pay him back later, everyone knowing but not saying that that would never happen?

I wish for her, a sharp thought that leaves an ache behind, like the smoke from a blown-out candle after a birthday wish.

I imagine her sitting in this chair, having this conversation with Uncle John, and that's when I know: she would refuse the money. She'd be convinced the two of us could manage on our own. But I also know Uncle John is right. My mother's illness and her irregular job mean she can't get good insurance. I think of the way I divide our money every week—anything she's gotten from selling a painting, whatever the neighbors have given me to watch their kids for a few hours after school—to pay for our groceries, the rent on our apartment, her medication.

There usually isn't anything left over.

“Okay,” I say. “That would be helpful.”

It doesn't feel like I've said enough.

“Thank you,” I add after a pause.

The words come out sounding formal rather than grateful, but Uncle John doesn't seem to expect anything else. He nods and stands up.

“We can start tomorrow,” he says gently. He pulls the door closed behind him.

Eleven

When the alarm rings early the next morning, Saturday, I open my eyes to see the bright red numbers on the clock glaring at me as if they're as angry about the time as I am. I slam the heel of my hand against the snooze button and turn over, cocooning myself in the pale guest room sheets. I don't fall back asleep. I just work my fingers into the weave of the blanket, pulling it out of shape. Soon there's a thumb-sized hole in the cream-colored knit.

At home I get up as soon as the alarm rings because I'm afraid the noise will bother my mother, lying in her bed on the other side of the room. The times she actually goes to sleep, I don't want anything to wake her up before she's rested. But this morning I hit snooze again and again and again. I'm half hoping it will wake up everyone else in the house.

Until eventually even I'm sick of the alarm's
enh-enh-enh
, and I shut it off and unroll myself from the blankets. When I trudge downstairs and into the kitchen in my pajamas, Leila's already there. And she doesn't look like my blaring alarm woke her up. She's dressed and the counter is strewn with ingredients. As I stand in the doorway, she levels off a cup of flour from a canister and dumps it into a mixing bowl.

She turns and sees me. “Morning,” she says, almost cheerfully, like we've always lived in the same house and greeted each other at breakfast.

I don't say anything, and after a minute of prickly silence and another cup of flour, Leila speaks again.

“I was late to rehearsal last night, so I got stuck having to bake for the whole band.”

Late because I kept everyone at the dinner table to talk about my mother? But Leila doesn't say that.

I step into the kitchen, the floor creaking under my bare feet, as if I can somehow step into this, an actual conversation with my cousin. “What happens if you don't bake for everyone?”

Leila adds sugar to the mixture in her bowl, cracks an egg rhythmically against the side.

“I have to sing in the hallway at school, between every period, for a whole day. That's James's rule.”

“And that's worse?”

Leila looks at me, a look that says
of course
. The Leila in my head is loud, willing to be wild, up for anything. I've forgotten that the real Leila can be just as cautious as I am.

“James probably just wanted the free food,” I say, even though I'm not sure I know James that well anymore. “He wouldn't have made you sing.”

“Of course not,” Leila agrees with me. “But I wanted cookies anyway. This is just an excuse. Actually, the whole singing thing reminded me of those notes your mom used to give you—you know the ones where she'd tell you to pretend to be someone else for the day? I'm surprised she never told you to be a singer.”

I nod mutely, but Leila can't see me, because she's busy fiddling with the measuring cups on the counter. There's a lump in my stomach and I have no idea what to say. Leila and I don't talk about my mother.

Leila has no idea my mother still gives me those notes.

“Here,” Leila says abruptly, pulling a mixer out of its box on the counter. “Hold this.” The real Leila has no trouble ordering me around. That's something she shares with the Leila in my head.

I could say no, but I actually like being asked, having something to do with my hands. So I take the mixer from her and stick the beaters in, pushing until they click into their slots.

“I need to add these in while the mixer's going,” Leila says, pointing to more measuring cups full of chocolate chips and coconut. “So whenever you're ready…”

I plug the mixer in and stretch the cord back across the counter to the bowl. Leila reaches over with the cup of chocolate chips. I switch the mixer on and stick it in the bowl—and cookie dough flies
everywhere
. The counter, our clothes, the floor, our hair.

We both shriek and jump back. Leila curses, I try to hold the mixer in the bowl and find the off switch while also keeping my pajamas away from the airborne flour-sugar-egg mixture, and somewhere in there the doorbell rings. For a minute there's a rhythm, the bell's
ding-dong
,
ding-dong
combined with the whir of the mixer.

Then, at once, everything is quiet. Dough is crumbling off the ends of my hair and I still have my arm stretched over the bowl, holding the turned-off mixer and trying to contain the damage. A drop of dough with a chocolate chip in it falls from Leila's sleeve onto the counter and her shoulders slump. I've just ruined her recipe.

I want to pick up the bowl and chuck all of the dough into the trash. How can Leila calmly and neatly bake a batch of cookies while I, even though I cook meals at home almost every day, can't manage a simple mixer?

But Leila isn't angry. I hear a soft sound coming from her, and when I look over, I realize she's actually
laughing
. So hard her shoulders are shaking and she can barely catch her breath.

“You have to…tilt the bowl…to keep everything from flying around,” she manages to say, bossy again.

Without warning, she picks a glob of dough off her shirt and flings it at me, hard, right at my nose. I duck, but it still hits the top of my head, adding to the sticky mess in my hair.

I'm holding some dough myself, about to pelt it back at her, when Uncle John walks into the kitchen, followed by James, his hair falling over his face.

“Look who I found at the front door,” Uncle John announces. Then he sees the mess.

Behind him, James's eyes meet mine, and then they travel over my dough-covered hair and pajamas. James grins and raises an eyebrow, and I feel myself start to turn red. I drop the handful of cookie dough I was about to toss at Leila back into the mixing bowl. James follows my arms to the bowl and his eyes light up, a mischievous look I recognize even though the face that's making it is five years older.

Leila and I, knowing what's coming next, reach for the bowl at the same time. She gets to it first and hugs it toward her, heedless of the flour and sugar lining its edge.

“No,” she tells James forcefully, still clutching the bowl and walking sideways with it toward the sink. He reaches over the counter for it, she holds it away, and both of them start laughing.

James catches my eyes over Leila's head, and I smile, thinking that this feels almost the way it used to.

But then Uncle John interrupts. “We can head out whenever you're ready, Sophie,” he says, and his words pull me away from the scene in the kitchen. They zoom me out of the room and up, up, until I'm back in the guest room by myself, no longer in on the joke.